So I have a dead xEM (see topic: xEM seems to be corrupted?) in the back of my left hand. It’s between the pinky finger and ring finger, it’s not deep. You can see it under the skin if I hold my hand just right.
The tag is dead. After countless frustrating attempts to unbrick it, it’s now determined to continue being uncooperative and is resisting my attempt to remove it.
I’ve made an incision about 4mm long above the tag, parallel to it starting at one end of the tag, then a 3mm incision perpendicular to it at the end, sort of making an L-shaped incision. Manipulating the tag, it will go past the incision, it will go to one side, or the other, but it’s super hard to get the thing to make an appearance in the incision.
On the rare times it does move to the incision, I get a glimpse of it, but it will not come out. It’s like it’s stuck in there or something. Doing this all one-handed with my right hand, so I can’t like hold the incision open with one hand and use forceps or whatever to snag it.
After 45 minutes poking around in the back of my hand with a scalpel, I have given up for now and probably won’t be eager to try again any time soon. Maybe a couple weeks before I get frustrated enough to have another go.
Having said that, if anyone has any tips on how to get it out (DIY), I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!
Ok, so, when an x-series is fully encapsulated, it becomes very hard to remove because the collagen and fibrin shell that forms around it can be extremely thin, but extremely durable. You may think you see the end of the chip poking out, but you’re probably seeing it through a thin layer of collagen.
Bottom line, doing a removal on yourself one handed will absolutely require a serious amount of cutting and digging and scar tissue. Even a medical doctor attempting it with two hands is very difficult. I have also personally removed several chips, and in those cases I had the person with the implant assist… so basically it required 3 hands to efficiently remove a chip from the 4th.
Now, that said, I suggest you go to a professional piercer who can use a 10g needle to basically do a reverse install… pushing the needle around the chip, which should help open up the encapsulation and extract the chip. If you do still want to try to DIY this, then I suggest you purchase a sterile 10g needle and pair of sterile gloves and sterile drape from a piercer and try to stab that sucker yourself.
Thanks @amal! We’d read about the collagen/fibrin shell, but I guess I never realized it was just that strong! We’ve also seen that webpage before but kinda forgot we’d read it. Some memory problems lol.
Gonna see our piercer this weekend for some other work, I’ll ask her while we’re there, if she’d be willing to have a go at the ‘reverse install’ with a 10g needle.
I don’t think I could do it myself, the way the implant moves around it’d need one hand to hold it still while the other was pushing the needle in.
It’ll likely be a couple weeks anways before we’re ready to try again. Right now it’s a bit inflamed and unhappy after all the poking and prodding and pushing this evening. lol.
Thanks @KaiCastledine we’re in Canada, so wrong side of the pond for a visit.
Life got in the way and haven’t had a chance to visit our piercer yet, but it’s still healing from our own attempt at extraction.
If we had access to (or could afford) a Proxmark RDV4 we’d have another go at trying to unbrick the thing and just leave it where it is. It’s like a perfect position, so we’re sad that it’s dead lol. Our PM3 Easy just can’t get through to it tho.